"'The key,' I told Rachel, 'is not to bet your heart.'"
-- Alec Soth, "Las Vegas Birthday Book"

"Patience is not very different from courage. It just takes longer."
-- James Richardson

Telling stories is hard work; the stories that I like, the ones that seem most powerful to me, have an ineffable quality of one word seeming to do the work of ten words. I don't know how to explain this, really. But what comes to mind is a huge piece of road machinery designed to drill deep holes. The machine has a long drill and when it swings into action, the drill goes down into the ground and the whole machine goes up, off the ground, so that its weight, all of it, rests on this one slender thing.

One word for ten.

How does a writer do that?
I think it has something to do with resting the full weight of your broken, battered, hopeful heart on every word of the story you are telling.

The key, then, is to bet your heart.
This takes courage. And patience.
And a great deal of foolhardiness, because, after all, you are taking a risk, exposing yourself, throwing your heart up into the air.

Every morning when I sit down to write, I say this prayer: please make me brave enough, patient enough, stupid enough to bet my heart one more time.